Google XML Sitemaps and What Google Shows as Sitemap

That’s the sitemap’s stylesheet. The correct URL is: https://pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml

Yes, I agree. That is the sitemap at the root of my site directory on my server.

What concerns me is that if I click on the see site map button on the Google site, I do not see my site map. I see the error message that I reported in the first post. I am linked to that as my sitemap which makes me believe that Google is not really reading my sitemap.

With all my other sites, if I click on that same link for that site’s sitemap, I see the actual sitemap.

I see this difference.
The link on Google’s site is https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml

That link takes me to error message.

You point out that link should be: https://pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml and yes that is the sitemap link.

If I type https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml into a browser I am linked to the correct sitemap as the www is stripped but Google Webmaster site tries to link to https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml and that yieldss the error message.. Something is happening with https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml vs https://pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml

That something is preventing webmaster tools from properly indexing this site. (I think)

Said another way, (I am pasting description of problem posted elsewhere)

I have a sitemap on the root of my website (pixelpointgraphics.com) to help with my Google searches. The sitemap is sitemap.xml and is generated by a WordPress Plugin called Google XML Sitemaps

I was checking Google Webmaster tools to see if, indeed , the site map was showing up. When I click on their button to show the sitemap, I get an error message instead of seeing the actual sitemap. This makes me think that Google’s bots may not properly index this site.

The url for the link from Google is: https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml

Click on that link and you will see the same error message that I get if I click on that link in Google’s Webmaster Tools program.

Now, I notice that whenever I hover on any page for my site including the index page (home) I get this link:

https://pixelpointgraphics.com/ The www. stripped out. So try clicking on https://pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml

You will see the correct link and the sitemap file.

If I type https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml into a browser or if you click on this link you will sometimes see
the www. stripped away and the page will be correctly displayed. Sometimes it is not stripped and the error will occur.

If I type in ANY other url to the site (graphics or framing or..) then the www is always stripped and the proper page always displays. The problem only occurs if the link is https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com/sitemap.xml which has been described is the link that is created by Google on their webmaster Tools Site.

I am very interested in your thoughts!

Usually the simplest thing is the answer to a problem.

OK, the Google Webmaster Tools finally choked on the sitemap url problem and started posting a long list (one for each url in sitemap) of errors. All were the same and the reason is that my original domain was https://www.pixelpointgrphics.com. Somehow in repointing the domain name to another host and installing WordPress and ?, the domain name pointing to the site is now pixelpointgraphics.com.

I really do not know the particulars of that.

So, my website name in Tools is https://www.pixelpointgraphics.com. I had to remove the sitemap asociated with that domain and more importantly create a new site “account” (pixelpointgraphics.com) and get it verified using the html page method and then resubmit the sitemap. After doing that all worked fine!